Francis: Our Father's merciful invitation involves correction

"Dear Brothers and Sisters,

 In these weekly catecheses inspired by the present Holy Year of Divine Mercy, we have often reflected on God’s fatherly love and forgiveness. The Prophets present this love also as involving correction, a summons to conversion and the renewal of the Covenant. Every parent knows the challenge of helping children to grow in freedom and responsibility. In the Scriptures, God expresses his dismay at the rejection of his love, as seen in the disobedience and sin of his children. If he chastizes his people, it is to move them to repentance and conversion. In his mercy, he asks them to turn back to him with all their hearts and to receive a righteousness that is itself his gift. God is pleased, Isaiah tells us, not by ritual sacrifice but by rejecting evil and practicing justice. Though our sins be like scarlet, he will make them white as snow. May all of us be open, during this year of grace, to our heavenly Father’s merciful invitation to come back to him and to experience this miracle of his love and forgiveness."

The page can be found HERE

Pray for the Holy Father


I also find the lack of good will and prudence toward "correcting" the Holy Father frustrating (like the people calling themselves originalists on the constitution ignoring de Vattel on the natural born clause and supporting Cruz, the demigod). So, I give you St. Pius X


"But in order that the desired fruit may be derived from this apostolate and this zeal for teaching, and that Christ may be formed in all, be it remembered, Venerable Brethren, that no means is more efficacious than charity. “For the Lord is not in the earthquake” (III Kings xix., II) — it is vain to hope to attract souls to God by a bitter zeal. On the contrary, harm is done more often than good by taunting men harshly with their faults, and reproving their vices with asperity… This charity, “patient and kind” (1. Cor. xiii., 4.), will extend itself also to those who are hostile to us and persecute us. “We are reviled,” thus did St. Paul protest, “and we bless; we are persecuted and we suffer it; we are blasphemed and we entreat” (1. Cor., iv., 12, s.). They perhaps seem to be worse than they really are. Their associations with others, prejudice, the counsel, advice and example of others, and finally an ill-advised shame have dragged them to the side of the impious; but their wills are not so depraved as they themselves would seek to make people believe. Who will prevent us from hoping that the flame of Christian charity may dispel the darkness from their minds and bring to them light and the peace of God? It may be that the fruit of our labors may be slow in coming, but charity wearies not with waiting, knowing that God prepares His rewards not for the results of toil but for the good will shown in it."

Pio X, P.P. - "E SUPREMI" 1903